No peace in our time

Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia, by Brendan Simms (Penguin, £8.99)

As Simms makes clear in this excoriating study, much of the blame for "Britain's unfinest hour since 1938" can be levelled at John Major's government. Simms exposes the rhetorical sleight of hand of Douglas Hurd and Malcolm Rifkind as they insist on non-intervention and obstruct US plans for military strikes. From the beginning of the crisis in 1992, the British favoured a "strong" Serbia as the best guarantee of peace in the Balkans. Sound familiar? As Margaret Thatcher said in a private moment with Hurd: "Douglas, Douglas, you would make Neville Chamberlain look like a warmonger." In a new preface, Simms calls again for a proper parliamentary inquiry into Britain's handling of the Bosnian war, but until that happens, This is the next best thing.

Heroines & Harlots: Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail, by David Cordingly (Pan, £7.99)

There are more heroines than harlots in this unfailingly entertaining book. For many women, the choice was either prostitution or donning a sailor suit and running away to sea. Dressed as a sailor, Anne Bonny took a shine to a handsome crewman and confessed to being a woman. So, it turned out, was "he". Hannah Snell joined the marines, sailed to India, and was shot in the groin in the siege of Pondicherry (she retrieved the musket ball herself so as not to be discovered). "Had you known," she finally told a fellow marine, "who you had between a pair of sheets with you, you would have come to closer quarters." Not necessarily, as a chapter on homosexuality at sea reveals. This is an exhaustive account of women and the sea, from female pirates to sirens and mermaids, and even those bosomy figureheads on the bows of ships.